* LEGO 4526 Batman $14.99
* LEGO 4527 Joker $14.99
* LEGO 4528 Green Lantern $14.99
These are surely the large constructed figs we saw in the ComicCon display:
The price points of the Hero Factory line (very comparable to these) are 7.99, 12.99 and 29.99. Those large comic characters are somewhat comparable to the 12.99 Hero Factory sets, and if you throw in a couple of dollar mark-up due to licensing, it comes out about right.
* LEGO 6858 DC 1 $11.99
* LEGO 6860 DC 2 $69.99
* LEGO 6862 DC 3 $19.99
* LEGO 6863 DC 4 $29.99
* LEGO 6864 DC 5 $49.99
These are surely the minifig sets. I do note that there is no set under $10, probably due to the licensing markup. Of course, it's not such a huge loss since these sets aren't army builders - who needs a squadron of Supermans? Maybe one extra to make custom Bizarro, but one of each fig is enough for me. We know from the press release earlier this summer that the January release will include "13 characters, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and villains the Joker, Bane, Harley Quinn and Lex Luthor." There are 6 unnamed characters there, but we've already seen from ComicCon versions of the Green Lantern, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy. 13 characters spread over five sets is pretty impressive. I'm guessing that the big $69.99 set will be centered around the Justice League, and include Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern battling some supervillain. We do know that one set is the Batcave (as it is one of the announced prizes in the official contest), so perhaps that is the $49.99 set. I'm guessing that at least two of the other sets will be Batman themed. My reasoning is that LEGO really likes to focus on vehicles. For instance, if you look at the Star Wars theme, there are many great settings in the movies, but the bulk of the sets are ships. If you look at the official Batman line from a few years ago there are ten fig-scale vehicle sets, two settings (the Batcave and Arkham), and one large UCS vehicle. The other major heroes mentioned in the DC universe just don't have as much potential for set variety. Besides, as Jack Nicholson's Joker said of Batman: "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" So we can also guess that the missing three figs from the promised thirteen characters are probably Batman-centric - Robin, the Riddler, maybe Two-Face. If this is true, it's a slight disappointment for me, since we've already seen a whole line of Batman, and there's a promised next wave of Batman coming out next summer connected with the Dark Knight Rises release. I would rather they spread the love a little, but, again looking back at the Star Wars license, how many iterations of the X-Wing have we had over the years? Complete speculation here, but I'd love to see the cheap set be Superman vs Lex Luthor. Supes is THE iconic superhero, and every kid needs a version of him, even if they can't get the high-end set that will surely have him.
One other thought - you'd think that with a blog like this, I probably read lots of comics. But I really don't any more. My comic love is more driven by the years I spent flipping pages as a kid, rushing home from school to catch the reruns of Adam West that came on at 3:30 (school got out at 3:00), getting up on Saturday morning to watch the Superfriends. I had a couple of friends in college who were comic book readers and regularly bought new copies, and so I would sit in their dorm rooms and read through them, but other than that I just flip through them at Borders (er, scratch that, Barnes and Noble now) on occasion. I tend to catch the big summer movie blockbusters, or at least when they get to HBO and Netflix. That's all the preliminary to say that I'm fairly ignorant of what's going on now in print. So, for instance, when I see MOCs based on the expansion of the Green Lantern series to all these different colors, I end up running around the internet reading up on it. That said, I was just reading how DC is rebooting everything, and starting all of their titles over at issue 1. I have no idea what that's going to mean for these heroes, but it seem that if LEGO is working with DC on this, the sets may well reference the new details of the DC universe rather than those we grew up with. It will be interesting to see if and how that manifests itself in these sets.
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